Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision council are front and centre in helping reestablish Canada’s reputation as one of the most environmentally aware places on earth.

“I’ve been following what’s happening in Vancouver,” said the internationally acclaimed environmentalist in an interview during the Globe 2014 conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre Wednesday.

“We’re all very encouraged by what the mayor’s doing, the 10-point plan the mayor has to make this (city) the lowest per capita carbon emissions city in the world and green in a lot of other ways. I think it brings us back to a lot of the things that Canada and B.C. have represented to the world.”

Kennedy, president of Waterkeeper Alliance and venture partner for Vantage Point Capital, made the comment following an hour-long discussion with Wal van Lierop, president and CEO of Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, titled Clean Capitalism Armchair: Innovation and the Clean Technology Future.

During the talk, the men discussed the promise of clean energy technology for a more sustainable, less carbon-intensive energy future, and how policies and programs to stimulate investment need to be expanded.

Kennedy said later in the interview that he supports a carbon tax such as the one B.C. brought in several years ago.

“A carbon tax is a mechanism for forcing the coal and oil and gas industries to pay the true cost of bringing their product to market,” he said.

“A study came out this week that said that one out of eight deaths on the planet last year was caused by emissions from carbon-burning fuels. It’s not just an environmental issue, it’s also a moral issue. British Columbia is like the moral fulcrum of Canada, which is a nation that everybody looks up to.”

However, Kennedy noted that during the last several years, Canada’s reputation as an environmental leader has slipped, and that Japan now spends 100 times as much as Canada on renewable energy.

“A lot of the laws we use have been eviscerated by the current government,” he said.

“It’s a sad thing because we’ve always looked to Canada and particularly B.C., which is kind of the moral heart and soul of Canada, as a place where people understood that good environmental policy is the same as good economic policy.”

During the discussion with van Lierop, Kennedy said environmentalism is about having a functioning free market.

“A true free market promotes efficiency and efficiency eliminates waste. And pollution is waste. In a true free market, we would be compelled to value our natural resources.”

Van Lierop said fusion is the “holy grail” of clean energy. “And it’s happening here in B.C. It’s getting very, very close. We have tremendous opportunity here in B.C.”

Kennedy said the transition to a cleaner environment can be much faster than many believe. “I think we can do this much quicker. We can’t listen to people who say we have to move slowly.”

Kennedy noted that electric cars only cost about three cents a mile to run, compared to 24 cents for a gasoline-powered car. The cost saving over 10 years, he said, is about $20,000.

“We’ll see a very fast free market adaptation to electric cars. And when it happens, we’ll see a lot of oil stranded,” he said.

As an example of how costs for new technology fall quickly, Kennedy cited the huge drop in prices for flatscreen televisions.

“The pace of innovations is much quicker in our lifetimes. Last year, every single American auto company had an electric car,” he said. “And you’re seeing prices come down. It will strand the internal combustion engine. You won’t see Edison light bulbs in five years.”

Asked what can be done right away, Kennedy said governments should rewrite the regulatory rules “to reward people for conserving energy.”

Van Lierop said in order to achieve results, “we all need to become leaders. Buy an electric vehicle. And business leaders should create a welcome environment for new technologies. Support fusion. It’s the holy grail of cheap energy.”

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